Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson, #7)

by Patricia Briggs

The line started at Target, wrapped around the shoe store and giant pet store, and disappeared around the corner of the strip mall into darkness. “They’re not open yet.” I did not want to go where that line of people was going. I wondered if this was how Civil War soldiers felt, looking over a ridge and seeing the other side’s combatants, grim and poised for battle. This line of people was pushing baby strollers instead of cannons, but they still looked dangerous to me.

“The Scottish Play. It’s ‘the Scottish Play.’ You should know better. There are some things you never name out loud, like Macbeth, the IRS, and Voldemort. Not if you want to make it to the mall tonight.”

“Where are you hit?” “Tranq. Arse.” That one wasn’t as clear, but I could understand him and assumed the last word was a location and not an epithet, though with Ben it was a risky call.

“Your eyes are gold, Mercy,” said Gabriel as he slid into the front seat. “I didn’t know they did that.” Neither had I.

You will eat this and go to sleep, so your pronouns get their antecedents back. The

“Finish your sandwich and go to sleep in a proper bed. After sleep, we can go buy guns, then tear the Tri-Cities apart looking for our men, right?” Kyle was a smart man, and I followed his advice.

Coyote never loses, Coyote told me. Because I change the rules of the games my enemies play. What are the rules of your game?

“Mi princesa,” he told me, his voice deep and flirty, “I was in Spain and I heard about the peanut butter. Two decades are nothing, I assure you—we will speak of it a hundred years from now in hushed voices. There are big bad wolves all over the world who tremble at the sound of his name, yet a little puny coyote girl peanut-buttered the seat of Bran Cornick’s car because he told her that she should wear a dress to perform for the pack.”

“You are certain that Peter is the only fatality?” “So far,” I said. “I find that very interesting in light of the murders of your attackers.” His eyes were bright and merry as he looked at me. Apparently, murders were good fun.

Then he’d come back home and found out that war didn’t cause fear—love did. He loved Mercy with a fierceness that still surprised him.

“You aren’t a bad sort for an abomination.” “I could say the same to you.” The mercenary glanced back and laughed. “Yeah. There is that.” He opened the door, and said, quietly, “I heard one of them say that there’s another assassin on the senator’s security detail.” “Aimed at whom?” asked Adam. The mercenary nodded. “I do like you. That is the right question. For you if you succeeded, for the senator if you didn’t.” He left without another glance.

He was at least as old as Elizaveta. She didn’t know it, would never know it because Adam understood people. Oh, she knew in abstract, unlike the public, that werewolves could live a good long time, but she’d never made the connection to him. He knew that because if she ever processed what she knew, she would hunt him down and try to make him turn her. He would kill her before he did that. The vampires had a taboo about attempting to turn anyone who was not a normal human. It had happened. The local seethe had a witchblood—and a woman who had been brain-damaged while still human.

Adam knew of three werewolves who had been witchborn. They were the three most dangerous and powerful werewolves in the world, and he didn’t think it was an accident. The idea of that much power in a woman so morally . . . ambivalent was disturbing.

“Dead guys don’t get an opinion,” Darryl told everyone. “We’re the good guys. That we’re scary doesn’t mean we’re the villains.”

I’ve seen a lot of wolves in human form with those bright wolf eyes. A lot of them. And none of those eyes scared me as thoroughly as Asil’s had. There was something else at home in Asil’s head and it had enjoyed killing the woman and would have been happy to continue the little spree. Bran’s son and chief assassin, Charles, scared me, but I was confident that if Charles wanted me dead, it would be quick and painless. Asil’s beast enjoyed playing with his victims.

“I’m tough,” Tad said soulfully, looking more puppylike and not very tough at all.

Sylvia was tough, smart, and could survive on her own—she didn’t need a handsome prince to ride up and rescue her. But that didn’t mean such a man might not want to protect her from everything he could, anyway.

Bran had sent the Moor to take care of Mercy and Jesse. The Moor, who was so crazy his own son had sent him to Bran to be put down. Except that Bran, for his own reasons, had decided not to do it. Asil. Maybe he had recovered from being crazy.

“This is old magic, but it knows me, and it won’t hurt anyone here and now.” “Carefully worded for a fae who doesn’t have to tell the truth,” said Asil. Tad turned to the old wolf coolly. “I am always careful with the truth. It is a powerful thing and deserves respect.” “Of course,” answered Asil. “When you are old, you will find yourself assuming that everyone else is careless with important things, too. My comment was not meant as censure; you merely surprised me.”

“Magic,” she told him. “Fae magic, old magic, and it’s crawling from the basement up to Tad’s hand like a cat seeking a treat.” She looked at Tad, and for a moment Mercy looked more fae than he did. “It likes you, but it isn’t very happy about us.” Tad smiled at her. “It’ll behave itself.”

Spiegel spieg’le finde,Vaters Bild und Stimme, in der Tiefe Deiner Sinne, seiner Worte seiner Form, meiner Worte meiner Form, führe, leite, führ’ zusammen, deiner Wahrheit Bindeglied, verbinde unsere Wirklichkeiten, Wesen und Natur im Lied!

“Are you sure you want to contact Maclibhuin? Do you know what he is?” “He’s mellowed with age,” Mercy assured Asil before Adam could say anything. She sounded like herself. “No more killing people because they annoy him. No more making crazy weapons that will inevitably cause more problems than they solve because he had a bad day and wanted to destroy a civilization or two.” Tad snorted. “He likes Mercy. He’ll help us.”

“Werewolf games,” Mercy said solemnly, “play for keeps, or go home.” She was so cute sometimes it made Adam’s heart hurt. She was also a killer CAGCTDPBT player. The pack made Mercy and him play on opposite sides to keep it fair.

The wolf was convinced that as long as he held her, nothing could touch her. Neither could he. Not for long. Mercy put her hand on Adam’s, and he could feel the silver go to work on his skin. He didn’t react because he craved her touch more than he minded the burn—and she’d taken it for him, hadn’t she? So maybe part of it was guilt, feeling that he deserved to hurt because he’d brought harm to her.

An obedient Mercy because she had no choice—that was an abomination.

They’d run into a fairy queen before. They weren’t fae royalty precisely but had a gift that allowed them to enslave humans and fae alike. Almost like a honeybee queen, they set up courts designed to both feed their power and entertain them. Not Adam’s favorite kind of fae.

“Beware of fairy gifts,” Mercy said. “And Greeks bearing gifts,” agreed Zee without a pause.

“Or you could try to force her to do something absolutely against her will,” said Zee casually. “That works more often on this kind of magic than love’s true kiss.”

I looked at him, my heart still pounding—with anger at Adam, with the release of a magical spell I hadn’t really believed in until it left, and with a shadow of memory. I remembered listening to Tad tell us that I’d had my will stolen away, and I had been . . . uninterested. I’d felt that way before.

and I didn’t want him to touch me. Didn’t want anyone to touch me ever again, but I knew that made no sense. “Mercy.” Adam waited until I looked over and met his eyes. “You broke the spell the minute something happened that you didn’t want. You were never really in its power. Not once you didn’t want to be.” His voice gave me an anchor, and I drew my unruly thoughts back in line.

Peace and Quiet is a two-part spell, each lesser. The first is spelled to make the wearer happy and relaxed. Sort of like the best marijuana ever. That leaves the prisoner vulnerable so that the second one can work to make the person wearing it compliant. The magic continues to work after the cuffs have been removed, so they could be used to subdue more than one prisoner.”

Zee taught magic the way he taught mechanicking—by making Tad do all the work while he stood behind him and made acerbic corrections. He did it in Old German, and though I can get by in modern German, the old stuff sounds a bit like Welsh spoken by a Swedish man with marbles in his mouth.

“That is one I thought would never change,” said Asil thoughtfully. “He loved my mother,” Tad told him. “Love is more powerful than anything, even an old grumpy fae who knows how to hate.” Asil gave Tad a thoughtful look. “Indeed?” And then he looked back at the mirror. “Love is both useful and powerful—but seldom convenient.”

Obstreperous,’ huh,” said Tad. “I see you’ve been using that Big Word of the Day calendar I got you last Christmas.” “That is irrefragable,” I told him solemnly.

“Do they always flirt with biblical quotes?” Asil asked Tad. In long-suffering tones, Tad said, “They can flirt with the periodic table or a restaurant menu. We’ve learned to live with it. Get a room, you guys.” “Quiet, pup,” said Adam with mock sternness. He gave my butt a promissory pat as he said, “Respect your elders.”

“Gabriel was on that list. You were not wrong to tell him that his association with us put him in danger.” “Maybe not,” she said, “but I was wrong to expect that to matter to him.” She looked at me, and her lips quirked up. “A friend in danger is not someone who should be deserted. Safety is not always the right path.”

“I’m a servant of the law, too, Tony,” Kyle said too hastily to be as smooth as his usual redirection. “And no one knows better than I how the law and justice do not, can not, always coincide. I swear to you now that werewolf justice is swifter and more just, if more brutal, than our court system can manage.” He leaned forward earnestly. “We humans are not equipped to deal with a werewolf fairly. And if the police had tried to arrest those men in Minnesota, some of them would have died. I am content that justice will be served in this case.”

“I have the power to say that Cantrip and the federal government is satisfied that Adam acted in self-defense when he killed those people,” Armstrong said. “Mr. Brooks is right, it would be a political nightmare for Cantrip if the actions of these men were to come out even though they were not acting in any kind of official capacity.” He took a deep breath. “It would be a similar disaster for the werewolves. In the current climate, I don’t know that you could get a judge to declare self-defense, Mr. Hauptman. If the trial went to a jury, a decision either way could lead to riots and unrest that might break out into open fighting in the streets.”

Looking for people in Cantrip who have problems with werewolves and the current legislation is like looking for cheese in Wisconsin.

Vision quest is opening yourself up to the world and waiting to perceive what it wants to show you, he’d told me. Then, almost absently, he’d said, Magic is like that. It wants to use you, and your only choice is yes or no.

“I like you,” Marsilia said to him. “You are pretty.” “I like you, too,” said Asil. “Vampires are an acquired taste.” He smiled, with white teeth showing.

Until that moment, I hadn’t realized that I’d quit fearing Asil somewhere along the way and started liking him. Not that he couldn’t still go crazy and kill me—but I grew up with werewolves. Any werewolf can kill you if you are stupid and quit respecting him. The trick is not to be stupid.

Marsilia had just apologized to me. Hell must have been experiencing some climate change.

William Frost, whoever he is, wherever he came from, has one of the rarest of vampire powers—he is a necromancer.”

A necromancer witch would control the dead—and ghosts and zombies weren’t the only kind of dead. That was why Marsilia was afraid.

A small smile ghosted across Marsilia’s face and was gone. “The Lord of Night might be angry with me, but he would enjoy avenging me.” She made a noise, and I couldn’t tell if it was happy or unhappy. Maybe even she didn’t know. “But he would enjoy mourning my death twice as much.” “Only great love can inspire such heated rage,” agreed Stefan, and there was a glimmer of affection in his voice. “But Frost is right to be afraid. Even now, the Lord of Milan talks of you to his courtiers.”

“Not quite the same way the fae and the wolves came out,” said Marsilia, her voice dry. “Bran hides the monstrous side of the werewolves, and the Gray Lords would have had the world believing that the fae were all like Tinker Bell. The Necromancer wants the world to know exactly what a vampire is, reveal ourselves in our full glory to completely terrify our prey, let the humans know once and for all who is the dominant species. He doesn’t just want to rule the vampires, he wants to take down the human government. He wants to rule.”

Marsilia’s eyes were dark again. And she still looked like a college student, young and vulnerable. I knew some of the people in Stefan’s menagerie whom she’d tortured to death. She was not some helpless girl but a sociopath who had outlived most of her enemies.

“He will not be pleased with thee, William Frost. But you won’t have to worry about it, because you’ll be dead.” Frost had quit smiling. “It’s like that bit in The Princess Bride,” I told him. “When Vizzini says, ‘You fell victim to one of the classic blunders.’ Never go in against an ancient Italian vampire when death is on the line.”

And I could see magic. Frost pushed his power at Marsilia. To me, his magic appeared to be a black spiderweb of nastiness that tried to stick to her. Greasy threads of power slithered from him to his puppet vampires. I wondered how much of the way I viewed his magic had been dictated by Marsilia’s comment about puppets, because Frost’s vampires had strings of his will tied around each hand and foot and a whole slender web around their heads. Or maybe Marsilia could see his magic, too. The vampires weren’t the only thing he was controlling. Fainter threads of power dripped from his hands to the ground, glistening faintly where they snaked across the floor and climbed the walls surrounding us, disappearing over the edges.